Posts by Leolaia

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Were 'alien residents' Second Class Israelites?

by The Searcher in

the accepted teaching amongst most (i'm addressing fellow witnesses here) is that 'alien residents' were merely "beneficiaries" of the law covenant, but were not equal with natural israelites.

the insight book has this to say; "the law covenant between jehovah and the nation of natural israel was made in the third month after their leaving egypt, in 1513 b.c.e.

(ex 19:1) it was a national covenant.

Leolaia

There is actually a lot of interesting stuff in the Judahite genealogies of ch. 4 of 1 Chronicles. I gave two examples of obvious toponyms presented as PNs (Ir-Nahash and Ge Harashim), but there are many others, such as Bethlehem, Tekoa, and Beth-Rapha, and if you compare the names in this section with the list of conquered Canaanite cities in the tribal allotment of Judah in Joshua 15, you will find that many are identical (such as Zorah in Joshua 15:22 and 1 Chronicles 4:2, Ethnan/Ithnan in Joshua 15:23 and 1 Chronicles 4:7, Ziph in Joshua 15:24, 55 and 1 Chronicles 4:16, Eshtemoa in Joshua 15:50 and 1 Chronicles 4:17, Gedor in Joshua 15:58 and 1 Chronicles 4:17, Sokoh in Joshua 15:35, 48 and 1 Chronicles 4:17, Zanoah in Joshua 15:34, 56 and 1 Chronicles 4:17, Keilah in Joshua 15:44 and 1 Chronicles 4:19, and Mareshah in Joshua 15:44 and 1 Chronicles 4:21). So what is Canaanite in one tradition is Judahite in another.

There are also interesting connections with the patriarchal traditions in Genesis. In v. 21, the "men of Cozeba" and "Laadah the father of Mareshah" are mentioned as among the sons of Shelah, the son of Judah (cf. Joshua 15:44 where Mareshah and Achzib are mentioned together as towns in Judah), and in Genesis 38:5 we read that Judah married " the daughter of a Canaanite man named Shua" and she gave birth to Shelah at Chezib. The two names are probably related and it is interesting that the tradition makes the descendents of Shelah have Canaanite ancestry; this is probably a historical memory of the fact that the people who were Canaanites in the LBA became Israelites/Judahites in the IA (a change in political and ethnic identity). Shua, moreover, has an analogue in the Shuhah of v. 11, who is explicitly designated as a Kenite (i.e. of Edomite or Midianite origin). There is also the problem of the Kenizzites, affiliated with the Kenites in Genesis 15:19. The reference to "Eshlon the Kenizzite" in v. 12 (LXX) directly precedes the listing of the sons of Kenaz in v. 13, who is given a Judahite genealogy. The connection between the two is clear from such passages as Numbers 32:12, Joshua 14:5, 14 where "Caleb son of Jephunneh" (mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:15) is termed a Kenizzite, whereas for the Chronicler (and elsewhere) Caleb son of Jephunneh was mentioned directly after the sons of Kenaz but not directly linked to him (whereas Othniel, brother of Caleb in Joshua, is stated to be the son of Kenaz). And in addition to the pre-Edomite Kenizzites in Genesis 15:19, there was also an Edomite Kenaz. The sons of Eliphaz the firstborn of Esau/Edom were Teman, Omar, Zepho, Kenaz, Korah, Gatam, and Amalek (Genesis 36:15). This includes the eponym Amalek for the Amalekites, just as Kenaz is the eponym for the Kenizzites. "Teman" connects directly with the Judahite "Temani", the son of Ashhur through Naarah (1 Chronicles 4:6); Temani is a gentilic form, making him the ancestor of the Temanite people (cf. Job 2:11 where Eliphaz is described as a Temanite). "Zepho" is cognate to the Ziph and Ziphah in 1 Chronicles 4:16 and notice that Zepho is affiliated with Korah. In 1 Chronicles 2:42-43, we read that Korah, Mareshah, and Ziph are clans of Caleb "the brother of Jerahmeel".

The detailed asides in ch. 4 of 1 Chronicles also give additional information. In addition to the asides about Ir-Nahash and Ge Harashim, it is stated that Mered son of Ezrah married Bithiah, daughter of Pharaoh, which gave birth to Miriam, Shammai, and Ishbah father of Eshtemoa (v. 17-18). This clearly attests intermarriage between Judahites and foreign elements in the population; in this case, Egyptian (the name Miriam also is consistent with an Egyptian theme). The next verse (v. 19) moreover refers to "Eshtemoa the Maakathite", and this is another Canaanite ethnonym, cf. Joshua 13:13: " But the Israelites did not drive out the people of Geshur and Maakah, so they continue to live among the Israelites to this day" (compare Deuteronomy 3:14). And Maakah in 1 Chronicles 2:48 is named as the (Canaanite?) concubine of Caleb the brother of Jerahmeel. So Eshtemoa, while a Maakathite (a Canaanite according to Joshua), is reckoned as a Judahite by the Chronicler. Finally, we have this material at the end of the Judahite genealogy:

1 Chronicles 4:21-23: "The sons of Shelah son of Judah: Er the father of Lekah, Laadah the father of Mareshah and the clans of the linen workers at Beth Ashbea, Jokim, the men of Kozeba, and Joash and Saraph, who ruled in Moab and Jashubi Lehem. (These records are from ancient times.) They were the potters who lived at Netaim and Gederah; they stayed there and worked for the king."

First of all, we have two more examples of professional guilds reckoned as clans: "the clans of the linen workers at Beth Ashbea" and the "potters who lived at Netaim and Gederah" reckoned among the Shelah clans of Judah (which as mentioned above have a Canaanite origin). And notice too that Jokim, Joash, Saraph, and the "men of Cozeba" are said to have "ruled in Moab"; supposed Judahites here are designated as Moabite rulers (probably not kings but possibly governors). So this points to some fluidity between the peoples of Moab and Judah.

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How many of the general public will know that Isaiah 65:17 was fulfilled over two and a half thousand years ago (according to the WTS)?

by JWB in

how many of the general public will know that isaiah 65:17 was fulfilled over two and a half thousand years ago (according to the wts)?.

would you like to wake up every morning with happy, positive thoughts?.

that's exactly what the bible promises us for the future.

Leolaia

The Society is completely correct that the promises of renewal in Trito-Isaiah concern the restoration of Judah following the Babylonian exile. What they cannot bring themselves to admit is that these promises did not see fruition. (Some historians, inferring from available sources, in fact suspect that the proto-messianic movement that Zechariah and Haggai supported was suppressed by the Persian authorities who never again allowed a Davidide to hold political office in the Yehud during the Persian Empire). And so the Society claims that the original understanding of the prophecy had an "initial fulfillment" (to the extent that the Jews experienced a restoration after exile), but since not everything expected in fact took place (such as a Davidic king at Jerusalem), designating a "future fulfillment" saves the prophecy from failure. It cannot be admitted as failure since it is recognized as scriptural (and thus inerrant), and so what failed to occur can simply be deferred to the future. The Society understands the logic of this too well, since they themselves do the same thing regarding their own prophecies. If a prophecy fails, it can be reinterpreted and the fulfillment deferred; at one time the battle of Armageddon was expected to end, or to occur, in 1914, but actual events that occurred that year led the Society to alter what was expected to occur in 1914, and defer the expected cataclysm of Armageddon into an unspecified time (or specified, in the case of 1925 and 1975) time in the future. As long as an expectation can be deferred, it could never be falsified by the passage of history. In fact, the JW expectation of a future paradise earth is nothing more than a modern variant reinterpretation of the post-exilic restoration promises to the Jews (the development of these ideas can be traced back centuries through Christian and earlier in Jewish biblical exegesis); ideological Zionism is yet another modern reinterpretation of the same promises. And of course the first-century AD Christian belief that Jesus of Nazareth is the Davidic Messiah whose kingdom would bring everlasting life to believers is indebted to the unfulfilled restoration prophecies as well.

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Were 'alien residents' Second Class Israelites?

by The Searcher in

the accepted teaching amongst most (i'm addressing fellow witnesses here) is that 'alien residents' were merely "beneficiaries" of the law covenant, but were not equal with natural israelites.

the insight book has this to say; "the law covenant between jehovah and the nation of natural israel was made in the third month after their leaving egypt, in 1513 b.c.e.

(ex 19:1) it was a national covenant.

Leolaia

Yes, we have in the Balaam oracle a reference to the Kenites via their eponym Cain, which is in accord with other metonymic uses of eponyms to refer to peoples in the same text (cf. the references to Jacob and Eber). The connection with J's primeval Cain is especially clear in the preceding reference to the Moabites as the "sons of Seth" (v. 17), and the Kenites are described as settled in a secure dwelling place which has resonance with the wandering character of the Kenites in J (which bears a similarity with the nomadic Rechabites, possibly the source of J's Kenite tradition). The Balaam materials seem to present a Transjordanian tradition of the background of the southern Levantine peoples that is distantly related to the traditions found in Genesis. That there is a prehistory to the underlying traditions is evident in the strong similarity between the Sethite and Kenite genealogies in J and P (essentially the same names in different forms in mostly the same order). The connection with metalworking (qayin "metal-smith") is of course overt in J's Kenite genealogy: Tubal-cain (a compound with qayin "metal-smith") is the inventor of metalworking, the first who "forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron" (Genesis 4:22). This works into the genealogy the primary trade associated with the Kenites. The Balaam oracle interestingly refers to the Kenites' "nest" (qinneka, a pun on qeni "Kenite") as "set among the cliffs (sela`)" (Numbers 24:21), and the thought is very close to what is said about the Edomites in Obadiah 3-4 who "live in the clefts on the cliffs (sela`) and make your home on the heights" and "make your nest (qinneka) among the stars". The Kenites have Midianite and Edomite ties in the OT, and the Edomite mountain fortress was called Sela` (modern Umm al-Biyara, the highest mountain at Petra), which was a major copper site. The largest copper mining and smelting site in the ANE however was at Khirbat en-Nahas ("copper ruin" in Arabic) in Midianite and Edomite territory. This site seems to be connected with the Kenites in the Chronicler. In 1 Chronicles 4:12, we read that "Tehinnah [was] the father of Ir-Nahash, these were the men of Rechab" (LXX); this is clearly an instance of a toponym (Ir-Nahash, possibly "copper town") being worked into a genealogy; compare v. 14, where Joab is stated to be "the father of Ge Harashim [i.e. "valley of the craftsmen"] It was called this because its people were craftsmen", clearly the name was originally a toponym (as the comment explicitly states). Ir-Nahash is usually identified with Khirbet en-Nahas, it is mentioned in close connection with the "valley of the craftsmen", and the Rechabites were a prominent Kenite clan (cf. the cognate genealogy in ch. 2 which refers to "the Kenites who came from Hammath, the father of the Rechabites"). Moreover the LXX posits the Rechabites of Ir-Nahash as "the brother of Eshlon the Kenizzite" and this is reminiscent of the adjacent listing of Kenites and Kenizzites in Genesis 15:19. So the biblical evidence is pretty strong that the Kenites were connected with the Edomite industry of copper smelting, and since the name means "metal smith," the name probably arose first as a professional name for the trade, and then became adopted as a clan name by those families engaged in the trade, and then became an ethnonym, and finally gave rise to an eponym (Cain) referring to the genealogical ancestor of this group.

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I think the Doctor will protect humanity far better that God

by Star tiger in

my wife has converted me into the cult of dr who, and he seems to be much more friendly to humanity, even though he was complicite in the destruction of his home planet gallifray, lol, a non judgemental superior being that cares for lesser life forms such as ourselves.. last saturday me, the wife and kids were total enamoured by the love and friendship of geeks, their was no judgement, homosexual or racial, things were really nice, my three kids sat for five hours, with breaks, and all were utterly enthralled by the proceedings, and as previously only a driver to these events i have been totally converted into the cult!.

by the way there are no contrary ways to behave against our natural humanity, everyone is equal, what a lovely place to be!.

looking at my kids at the time the were totally enchanted by the proceedings, not like when i remember my upbringing with the boring and utterly pointless conventions!

Leolaia

As you can tell by my avatar, I'm a fan.

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Were 'alien residents' Second Class Israelites?

by The Searcher in

the accepted teaching amongst most (i'm addressing fellow witnesses here) is that 'alien residents' were merely "beneficiaries" of the law covenant, but were not equal with natural israelites.

the insight book has this to say; "the law covenant between jehovah and the nation of natural israel was made in the third month after their leaving egypt, in 1513 b.c.e.

(ex 19:1) it was a national covenant.

Leolaia

First of all, it usually isn't a matter of "proof" when it comes to historical evidence; history is more a matter of probabilities and preponderance of evidence. Sure one could say that there were different Korahs (and Calebs and Hebrons and .... etc.), but the more general observation to be made is that the same names pertaining to the same locations co-occur in biblical sources, sometimes affiliated with Edom and sometimes affiliated with Judah (or in this case, the tribe of Levi in Judah). This is especially the case since these are really toponyms and ethnonyms (tribal and clan names), not personal names. We think of them as personal names because they are formally presented in genealogies, but this was a literary device to indicate political/cultural affiliation. It would be rather like saying Chicago and Peoria were sons of Illinois, and Illinois was the son of America. A good example of this is the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, which presents the seventy nations of the earth as derived in orderly fashion from the offspring of Noah's sons. One of the sons of Japheth was Javan (Greece, i.e. the Ionians), and the sons of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim which refer to Mediterranean locales including Alashiah, Tartessos, Kition, and Rhodes (cf. also Isaiah 23:1, 66:19, Ezekiel 27:6-7). Mitzraim (Egypt) was similarly a son of Ham and the sons of Mizraim included Pathrusim (Upper Egypt, cf. Isaiah 11:11, Jeremiah 44:1, Ezekiel 30:14) and Naphtuhim (Lower Egypt), and these names have geographical meaning in the Egyptian language. It is similar with the twelve sons of Jacob; these are characters in the patriarchal narratives but they personify the twelve tribes of Israel and construe them ideologically as sharing a common, single origin by descent. That the tribal names were not originally PNs can be seen in the appropriate geographical meaning of the names: Naphtali ("height", pertaining to the highland country), Ephraim ("fertile", pertaining to the farmlands), Benjamin ("sons of the south," pertaining to the southerly location of Benjamin). As for Levi, it is notable that the tribal name is identical to the gentilic "Levite", which may indicate that the former is a secondary adaptation of the latter. One may compare the clan name "Kenite" as the gentilic of the word for "metal smith" (a profession, or social class), and "Levite" would be the gentilic of the term meaning "pledged", i.e. the Levites were "pledged ones" (priests), and so the name reflects the origin of the name as referring to a social class; only later did the "Levites" become construed as a "tribe" by descent. And so I would argue that the names discussed in my last post were also first toponyms (Hebron and Libnah were important towns in southern Judah) and clan names (i.e. the Hebronites and Libnites living in Hebron and Libnah) before they became eponyms. Libnah ("whiteness"), for instance, has geographical meaning and may pertain to a mound of chalk located near the town. The Chronicler makes Caleb a descendent of Judah, with Hebron designated as a Calebite and Korah as a son of Hebron. This is aimed to explain how the Calebites, Hebronites, and Korahites were clans in Judah (cf. Joshua 15:13-14 which places the Calebites in the town of Hebron). Another OT source construes Hebron, Korah, and Libnah as Levite clans (from the tribe of Levi instead of Judah) living in the tribe of Judah. It is unlikely that these were totally different clans from the former. Other OT sources present Calebites as Edomites from the clan of Kenaz (whereas elsewhere Kenaz and Caleb are named as brothers descended from Judah, or the Kenizzites comprise a pre-Israelite Canaanite tribe), the Libnites as siding with Edom in the war against Judah, and Korah as a son of Edom. So the same towns and clans were alternatively construed as associated with the tribe of Judah, or with Levites living in Judah, or with Edom. This disparity reflects the complex history of Judah. Edomites moved northward following the expansion of the Nabataeans, and following the destruction of Jerusalem in the Neo-Babylonian period, Edomites settled much of the land of Judah and so there was considerable conflict in the early post-exilic period between the returnees and the Edomites living in the land. Hebron remained in Edomite hands until the Maccabean wars of the second century BC.

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Were 'alien residents' Second Class Israelites?

by The Searcher in

the accepted teaching amongst most (i'm addressing fellow witnesses here) is that 'alien residents' were merely "beneficiaries" of the law covenant, but were not equal with natural israelites.

the insight book has this to say; "the law covenant between jehovah and the nation of natural israel was made in the third month after their leaving egypt, in 1513 b.c.e.

(ex 19:1) it was a national covenant.

Leolaia

It is pretty obvious that entire clans of Edomite origin were later incorporated into Judah. From an earlier post of mine:

Another important indication is found in the early tradition in Numbers 26:58 (LXX): "The following are the Levite clans: The Libnite clan, the Hebronite clan, the Korahite clan, and the Mushite clan". This non-genealogical fragment is embedded within P's genealogical census scheme and conflicts with it on a number of points (compare v. 10 and 57) and P appears to be dependent on it in his genealogy in Exodus 6:16-19 which contains a number of secondary contrivances. The first two names locate the Levites in two different towns in Judah, Libnah and Hebron (which turn up in the much longer list of Levitical cities in Joshua 21), and the southern credentials of the Korahites are also manifest in the fact that elsewhere Korah is one of the sons of Esau (= Edom) "born in the land of Canaan" (Genesis 36:5, 14), whereas the Chronicler makes Korah a son of "Hebron" (1 Chronicles 2:42), who in turn is designated as a Calebite. And the Calebites in turn are characterized elsewhere as Edomites of the clan of Kenaz (cf. Genesis 36:11, 15, 42, Judges 1:12), and Joshua 15:13-14 locates the Calebites in the town of Hebron. That the Calebites and Levites were both located in Hebron and both given Edomite ties through Korah is one sign of the overlap between the two groups. The town of Libnah also is depicted as siding with the Edomites in war against Judah (2 Kings 8:20-22), suggesting that the Levite clan of the Libnites had Edomite sympathies.

I also think it is probable that the OT is aware that the tribe of Dan, despite the patriarchical narrative's aims at designating Dan as a son of Jacob, was originally of non-Israelite origin: it was only secondarily reckoned "as one of the tribes of Israel" (Genesis 49:16), it lacked a tribal territorial allotment (Judges 18:1), the OT lacks genealogies for Dan unlike the other tribes, the tribal name is similar to that of one of the Sea Peoples (called the Danaeans/Danoi/Denyan/Danuna), and OT portrays Dan as originally a seagoing people on the coast settled in territory adjacent to the Philistines (another Sea People), cf. Judges 5:17, 14:1, 16:1, etc.

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Did You Watch The Waltons?

by snowbird in

if so, did you enjoy the show?.

i loved it.

missed quite a few episodes due to attending kh meetings, but i'm making up for that.. the show reminds me so of growing up in a large family, having to share everything, and looking out for each other..

Leolaia

Which bring me to critique Good Times

Florida didn't have a job and James couldn't keep one

and yet Thelma was the best dressed girl in the projects

God, nothing takes me back to the far reaches of my childhood memories like hearing the theme song....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFKHg5CP7pk

Makes me feel like I'm 4 years old again!

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Sportin' the Sparlock

by blond-moment in

got mine..

Leolaia

Okay, are you ready for an Experience TM ?

So I just received my tshirt this afternoon. I had to go to the store, so I thought, what the heck, I'll put it on. So no less than ten minutes after I received my shirt, I was at the meat counter at the supermarket and the butcher dude asked me, "Is that from a video game or something?" So I told him its a character created by the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses to discourge kids from using their imagination...and he was like what??? So I explained briefly that it was from a children's video they made to teach that it is wrong to play with toys like this, anything with a magical fun theme like this, and he said, "And you support that?" And I said, "lol, no, this shirt is to protest that." And he said, "Ah, good, that sounds really petty of them." And btw I had this conversation in front of several people waiting to be served.

Anyway, I never really talked in public about JWs; I'm a real live-and-let-live person, and even when a JW comes to my door I politely tell them I'm not interested, so it was kind of a weird experience talking about JWs to strangers (a kind of reverse witnessing), but I guess this t-shirt is a conversation starter. Again, I wore the t-shirt no less than ten minutes before I was asked about it.

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